PhD projects available at Swinburne university, Melbourne
Posted 25 August 2022
Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia invites applications from students of any nationality for PhD positions to begin in late 2022 or in 2023. The deadline for expressions of interest (EOIs) is September 30th 2022.
To submit your EOI, fill in this Expression of Interest form.
We are currently advertising the following seven PhD projects that have dedicated funding.
Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia invites applications from students of any nationality for PhD positions to begin in late 2022 or in 2023. The deadline for expressions of interest (EOIs) is September 30th 2022.
To submit your EOI, fill in this Expression of Interest form.
We are currently advertising the following seven PhD projects that have dedicated funding.
|
Advanced signal processing techniques and machine learning for Fast Radio Burst and Pulsar Discovery in the SKA era
Supervisors: Prof. Matthew Bailes , Prof. Adam Deller and A.Prof. Ryan Shannon Modern radio telescopes generate up to Terabytes of data every second that needs to be captured and transformed into scientific products. This is done by a combination of specialist chips, high-bandwidth network connections, and moving vast amounts of data from memory via various buses to a combination of Field Programmable Gate Arrays, GPUs and CPUs. We are seeking a PhD student with either a knowledge of signal processing techniques or coding skills that will operate at the interface between science and instrumentation to accelerate discovery in Fast Radio Bursts or Pulsar astronomy and to help us reduce our carbon footprint. The student will participate in projects that make use of both signal processing and machine learning using the Molonglo telescope, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), the MeerKAT radio telescope and the Parkes 64-m observatory. Prototyping will be done on the OzSTAR supercomputer and in partnership with Nvidia. |
Image Caption: The OzSTAR supercomputer has over 260 GPUs for cutting edge signal processing techniques and radio astronomy discoveries.
|
|
The Keck Wide-Field Imager – an exciting opportunity for a software-minded student
Supervisors: Prof. Jarrod Hurley and Prof. Jeff Cooke This project is an opportunity to be involved in the development of the Keck Wide-Field Imager (KWFI) instrument which will be installed on the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii. KWFI will be the most powerful wide-field optical imager on Earth or in space for decades, facilitating a vast array of science goals, including follow-up to gravitational wave detections. The build team for the instrument will be led from CAS and this PhD project offers the opportunity to be a high-profile member of the build team from the early stages of the project, focusing mainly on the software development aspects. KWFI will bring together an array of technology and manufacturing innovations – across optical, opt-mechanical, Industry 4.0 (digital twin and smart sensors), composite material and software engineering areas – to develop the world’s first smart instrument. The software engineering will include development of the instrument control software for the filter exchange mechanism and other components of the instrument, such as the data reduction pipeline. On these aspects you will work closely with a team of professional software developers at Swinburne to learn best practice in build environments, software optimization, accelerated computing and testing, for example, while becoming an expert in a vital role within astronomy. If you like writing software, working in a team to develop new innovative techniques and being part of an exciting science program, we would like to hear from you. |
Caption: The Keck Observatory
|
|
Immerse yourself in the amazing realm of stars, binaries and star clusters
Supervisors: Prof. Jarrod Hurley Star, binaries and star clusters are the fundamental building blocks of galaxies and underpin much of what we know about astronomy. Star clusters, in particular, are fascinating laboratories in which to study the mix of stellar, binary and dynamical evolution - with this mix expected to produce much of the stellar exotica that we observe, e.g. blue stragglers, X-ray binaries and mergers of neutron stars and black holes that produce gravitational waves. To model star clusters and their populations we have a direct N-body code and associated stellar/binary population synthesis codes available to run on the OzSTAR supercomputer to investigate a range of potential projects. If you are interested in pushing the boundaries of how stellar populations form, evolve and interact, please get in touch to discuss potential projects. These projects can be designed to cover a range of skillsets and interests, from confronting observations with model data to developing machine learning algorithms to constrain the astrophysical parameter space, to name a couple of examples. |
Image caption: An illustration of a binary star system within a globular cluster. Credit: Mark A. Garlick/University of Warwick
|
|
Detecting and characterizing transient gravitational wave sources
Supervisors: Dr. Jade Powell The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have discovered several signals from the mergers of binary black holes and neutron stars. Many more gravitational wave events are expected as the detectors begin their fourth observing runs next year. This project will focus on improving our knowledge of transient gravitational wave signals by detecting and characterizing their sources. The project will also contribute to the science case for the next generation of gravitational wave detectors, as more sensitive detectors will present new data analysis challenges for the detection of transient gravitational wave sources. |
Caption: Catalogue of all gravitational wave detections from 2015 to 2020. Credit: Carl Knox, Swinburne/OzGrav-ARC Centre of Excellence
|
|
Probing the cosmic web with Fast Radio Bursts
Supervisors: A.Prof. Ryan Shannon, Prof. Adam Deller, and Prof. Matthew Bailes Fast radio bursts are an enigmatic population of transient astronomical events that are promising to be a revolutionary astrophysical tool. The bursts are exciting because they both represent a brand new and unprecedentedly luminous radio transient but are also now demonstrating the ability to uniquely probe the cosmology of the Universe. This project will utilize the wild field of view of the Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) to rapidly increase the population of the bursts and identify hosts, emission mechanisms and explanations for the bursts. ASKAP has proven itself to be a reliable FRB detection machine and localization machine, able to pinpoint burst locations to within galaxies. The localisations have been used to study the intergalactic medium and find the Missing Baryons . In the next year we will be developing a new FRB detection system for ASKAP that will increase its burst detection rate by a factor of 10. Your project, which would be undertaken as part of the Commensal Real Time ASKAP Fast Transient collaboration could include:
|
Caption: The Australian Sqare Kilometre Array Pathfinder, located in outback Western Australia, is a radio array of 36 antennas. Credit: Alex Cherney/CSIRO
|
|
Hunting for supermassive black holes with gravitational waves and pulsar timing arrays
Supervisors: A.Prof. Ryan Shannon and Prof. Matthew Bailes Supermassive black holes - black holes that are billions of times more massive than the Sun, are thought to reside in the Centres of most galaxies. Binary supermassive black holes, produced when galaxies merge, are thought to be the loudest emitters of ultra-low nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves. These gravitational waves can potentially be detected by observing an ensemble of ultra-stable millisecond pulsars (a pulsar timing array) with the most sensitive radio telescopes on Earth. The breakthrough detection is anticipated within the coming years. In this project, you will develop advanced algorithms to search for gravitational wave signatures in pulsar timing array data sets. Using the OzStar supercomputer, you will apply these methods to world leading pulsar timing sets, including that from the Swinburne led MeerTime Pulsar Timing Array and the International Pulsar Timing Array. You will interpret the implications of the detections in the context of models of galaxy formation and evolution. |
Caption: The 64-dish MeerKAT telescope in South Africa will be extended to form the 196-dish Square Kilometre Array and is used by Swinburne to pioneer signal processing techniques for radio astronomy
|
|
Discovering the origin of gravitational waves
Supervisors: Dr. Simon Stevenson Gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars and black holes are now being observed on a regular basis. The signals encode information about the masses and spins of the objects, which we can use to learn about how these objects formed. Some questions are starting to be answered: we now know that pairs of neutron stars and black holes (in all permutations) exist and merge in the universe, we know roughly how often these mergers happen, and we know roughly what the masses of black holes are. What we currently don't know is how these compact binaries form in the first place. This project aims to make theoretical predictions for the properties of gravitational wave mergers originating from a variety of different astrophysical scenarios (such as binary evolution and star clusters) using a suite of state-of-the-art modelling tools such as COMPAS, NBODY7 and MESA. These predictions will then be compared to the ever growing population of observed gravitational waves in order to uncover their origins. |
Caption: A pair of interacting massive stars (VFTS 352) that may eventually form a pair of merging black holes. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
|
